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Mortal Kombat II will be released in theaters on May 7.
A good chunk of the way into Mortal Kombat II, a character says something along the lines of “Never forget who you are!” – a well-worn cliché that’s totally in line with the source material’s cool-sounding pseudo-mysticism. Who could fail to not forget to keep remembering MK3’s introductory adage of “There is no knowledge that is not power,” a long-winded way of saying “Knowledge is power.”
Well, if there’s one piece of knowledge that Mortal Kombat II harnessed the power of, it’s knowing exactly what it is: a movie called Mortal Kombat II.
If you’re sitting up close, sitting bolt upright and paying close attention, that means the film is the direct continuation of Simon McQuoid’s 2021 adaptation of the beloved and long-running fighting game series. If you’re sitting a little further back, it’s the sequel to Simon McQuoid’s 2021 reboot of the mostly-beloved 1995 Paul W.S. Anderson adaptation of the beloved and long-running fighting game series. Wherever you’re sitting, it’s a movie about a bunch of colorful weirdos beating the shit out of each other – and only half the words in the title are spelled korrectly.
Before we get into it, a little bit of kontext about my relationship with the franchise: I am by no means a hardcore Mortal Kombat fan. I grew up playing the original games enthusiastically (read: button-mashing) and I’ve seen the original 1995 film more times than I can remember. I’ve fully accepted the fact that I suck at fighting games, but have still occasionally dabbled in NetherRealm’s recent entries in the series, and I wholly appreciate how much fun that studio is clearly having not just killing its darlings, but finding inventive new ways to make them brutally murder each other.
The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie was much better than I’d expected it to be. The worst things about it are readily apparent from the jump: a tedious amount of time spent delivering exposition to the audience by way of its original protagonist, Lewis Tan’s Cole Young, who isn’t quite as compelling as the established characters from the games. The exposition outlines the rules of this multiverse, in which feuding realms forgo conventional warfare in favor of regularly-scheduled tournaments to establish dominance. Champions are chosen to represent their respective realms, and they duke it out in a series of one-on-one matches.
Whereas the 1995 movie actually shows us this tournament taking place, the 2021 version uses its runtime to establish its existence and purpose. About halfway through an extended training montage for Earthrealm’s champions, it all goes sideways when Outworld’s premier evil sorcerer Shang Tsung decides to cheat, sending his goons to pre-emptively kill off the competition. So, the last Mortal Kombat movie showed plenty of mortal combat in the literal sense, but we never actually saw the titular Mortal Kombat tournament.
Maybe that was a little disappointing, but I also appreciate the restraint that the first movie showed in saving so much for later. I know that’s a questionable virtue to highlight in a film where a guy uses a magic hat to cut a bat-winged woman in half, but it didn’t spread itself thin or overstay its welcome. It killed off a handful of characters in spectacularly gruesome ways, but also saved some for later: teasing the existence of fan-favorite Johnny Cage and fan-favoring Princess Kitana.
If you got bored with that much of a recap, rest assured, Mortal Kombat II doesn’t waste any time delivering on everything the first film took time setting up. It hits the ground running and makes a beeline for the proverbial fireworks factory. Much as the first film started with a flashback establishing the rivalry between Hanzo “Scorpion” Hasashi and Bi-Han, aka Sub-Zero, Mortal Kombat II opens in the peaceful realm of Edenia, where we’re introduced to King Jerrod, his wife Cindel, their young daughter Princess Kitana, and Shao Khan, the jerk who lives in the realm next door.
A fight scene ensues that’s reminiscent of one of Game of Thrones’ most memorably gruesome battles. It might not be quite as impactful without four seasons of build-up preceding it, but Mortal Kombat II fully understands that its appeal lies in the thrill of seeing characters tear each other apart, not so much their motivations for doing so. With all due respect to NetherRealm’s deep lore, consuming a piece of Mortal Kombat media for the story is a little like reading Playboy for the articles. They’re in there! Steakhouses also have vegetarian options. I’m just saying.
Cole Young was the focal point of the first film, but the sequel thankfully sidelines him in favor of Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage and Adeline Rudolph’s Kitana. Kitana, now grown up, gives us a window into what’s going on in Outworld, and unsurprisingly, Shang Tsung and Shao Khan don’t have very sportsmanlike intentions for this upcoming tournament. Meanwhile, Johnny’s onboarding process to Earthrealm’s team of good guys offers a few sprinkles of exposition in-between heaps of smart-ass color commentary.
I genuinely adore Karl Urban. He’s given us some iconic performances in other realms of pop culture, from Éomer to Judge Dredd to Billy Butcher, but his spin on Johnny Cage left me underwhelmed. It’s not bad, per se, but it just feels subdued compared to some of the scenery-chewing we’ve gotten from previous Johnny Cages across movies, games, shows, and animation. In all fairness, this version of Johnny Cage is supposed to be a tired, washed-up has-been, not an A-list movie star, so maybe that was the point, but his one-liner delivery wasn’t quite as nutty or punchy as his trademark nut-punch.
Of course, the bar for color commentary is extremely high when pitted against Josh Lawson’s Kano, who absolutely stole the show in the first film before his ignominious demise. The last movie featured an undead ninja showing up out of nowhere to yell “I came back from hell to kill you!”, so I don’t think it’s a huge spoiler to reveal that, somehow, Kano is back among the living because reasons, ready to run his mouth.
Between Johnny Cage and Kano, there’s a steady stream of pop-culture wisecracks made throughout the film, which are funny enough at face value, but even more funny when you stop to realize they’re almost exclusively namechecking other Warner Bros. IP. There is a select type of person who will rankle at these jokes being made when the fate of Earthrealm hangs in the balance, but surely it’s no more immersion-breaking than characters turning into animals, or transforming their opponents into babies, or a random guy appearing in the corner of the screen to say “TOASTY!” because someone did an uppercut – and those things all happen in the source material. If anything, the dull roar of Warners franchise namedrops feels right in line with recent Mortal Kombat games’ DLC guest characters. If we get two or three more of these movies, I have no issue with the prospect of the defenders of Earthrealm having to fight Jason Voorhees and Robocop and The Joker or whatever.
The other returning characters are great, even if they aren’t given quite as much to do. As revealed in the trailers, Kung Lao is alive again (because… again… reasons) and he and Liu Kang throw down in one extremely fun fight scene that Max Huang and Ludi Lin make a meal out of. Mehcad Brooks is effortlessly likeable as Jax, and Lewis Tan’s Cole Young isn’t totally backburnered. Jessica McNamee’s Sonya Blade does her best to corral this ragtag crew, and though he’s likened to various Warners-owned wizards, Tadanobu Asano’s portrayal of Rayden is more reminiscent of Professor X.
Like Asano’s Rayden, Hiroyuki Sanada’s portrayal of Scorpion has more weight after seeing both actors’ excellent performances in Shogun. I would’ve liked to see more of Scorpion, but that’s a blanket statement that applies to not just this movie, but all movies in general, as well as real life. Scorpion rules. I’m glad they put him in this movie instead of replacing him with a yellow robot wearing motocross pads, which has been an issue several times in the past.
Sub-Zero (or rather Bi-Han) also rules, and he’s yet another character whose demise in the first film wasn’t a deal-breaker for showing up in the sequel. This should be no surprise to anyone with a cursory familiarity with the lore of the games.
After rattling off all those characters, it might be concerning that there are still quite a few I haven’t mentioned. For the sake of saving some surprises, I’ll let you be the judge of how they’re handled, but I was once again impressed with the balancing act Mortal Kombat II managed to strike. It’s a stacked roster, but not a bloated one. All the characters are given something to do, but never to the degree that the plot drags. It probably doesn’t hurt that the plot is mostly “people fight each other.” At the same time, this is Mortal Kombat, and characters do get killed off for thrills, but those thrills never feel cheap or half-assed… y’know, aside from when someone’s ass is literally cut in half. Mortal Kombat II doesn’t feel like it’s in a hurry to burn through the whole roster, but it also doesn’t pull any punches. NetherRealm has plenty more characters to dismember in the next movie, and if you’re mad about who dies in this one, chill. There’s a necromancer on standby.
While the titular Mortality of characters might be iffy, the Kombat is not. There’s an abundance of special effects in every frame of this film, but at no point does it feel like they’re being used to upstage the fight choreography. “Realistic” is not a word I feel comfortable putting anywhere in this review, but the fight scenes have a good weight to them, and they’re shot clearly and cut cleanly enough that it’s easy to understand what’s going on. Visually, everything meshes pretty well. Some of the sets veer into CGI-heavy territory, but never offensively so, and at no point is the movie boring to look at. Spurts of crimson blood mid-fight are accented with fireballs and lasers and neon flashes of green and magenta magic, and at several points the fights are framed exactly like the video game. It’s a cool gimmick, extremely well-executed.
My one lingering nitpick about the recent Mortal Kombat movies is that they look great, but they could sound better, specifically in the needle-drop department. Like the first film, the end credits features a banger remix of Techno Syndrome, the incomparable theme from the 1995 film that lives in our heads rent-free. Johnny Cage’s movie-within-a-movie is set to a great remix of The Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” which works really well, but other than that, the music is limited to the decent albeit unexceptional score. Between the precedent set by Paul W.S. Anderson’s original film and Mortal Kombat II’s rapid-fire pop-culture references, a few well-placed licensed tracks would’ve been welcome.
Mortal Kombat II is hot on the heels of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, another video game sequel that had a clear understanding of what it was and who it was for: a feature film adaptation of what people love about the Mario games, made with those people in mind. Video games are, in many cases, fun first, story second. Successfully adapting that fun to a new medium is as much as, if not more of, a challenge as rehashing or reinventing or otherwise reformatting a story based on, say, a fantasy novel, superhero comic, or Saturday morning cartoon.
If you sit down to watch Mortal Kombat II expecting karefully krafted kharacters and komplex konflicts, you might be disappointed. Again, the kuality of writing is pretty klearly telegraphed by the kreatively spelled title.
However, if you’re expecting a movie about a bunch of colorful weirdos beating the shit out of each other? It’s showtime.
